Despite a long-running sense of animosity between the core of a Boston Celtics championship team and marksman Ray Allen, the feud might come to an end in the very near future.
Allen was part of the 2017 Super Penguin Basketball Celebrity Game in Shanghai, China; alongside his former teammate and 2008 Finals MVP Paul Pierce, who will now wear Celtic green one more time before hanging them up for good coming into next season.
“Time to get the band back together,” Pierce's Instagram caption read. “No matter what happen we all formed a special bond that can never b broken.”
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Tencent, a Chinese media company, reported that Allen and Pierce had met and spoke about family and natural disasters like Hurricane Irma, among other topics.
Ray Allen talked to Tencent about his rift with that Boston core without mentioning any of his other former teammates by name, via ESPN's Adam Reisinger.
“There is so much that goes on behind the scenes with teams,” Allen said. “The players understand it, the organization understands it. But when I left, what you know is that everybody on one side is gonna say everything they need to say to make their side look like they did everything they could to make sure that they made it correct for me. But from my opinion, I see something totally different.”
“I haven't said anything negative about these guys. It's been five or six years since I've been gone. Seems like it was a year or two ago. When I left, I was a free agent. It's disheartening when you hear negative things people say about you, because when you win, you love each other, the families are close all time. When you win together, you always share that bond. That, to me, it's never changed.”
Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, and Glen “Big Baby” Davis were all together in a TNT's Area 21 segment during last season, where they initially opened up a potential door to make amends. Allen was absent from such.
“I was initially hurt by the whole way everything went down,” Pierce said during the segment, noting Allen's departure from Boston in 2012. “Like, I don't have no beef with none of my teammates. I was just hurt on how it went down. We all came together, we talked about it. We talked every day. We hung out all the time, and then, when it was time for free agency — and to each his own — but I thought we formed a brotherhood here in Boston… That's what I was hurt about when Ray didn't at least give us a heads up about it.”
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